The book Checklist Manifesto was written by Atul Gawande which clarifies how a small, straightforward medical checklist can significantly reduce the chances of death situations and failure in life.
It is soundly defended and thoughtfully written. This book is for medical professionals to develop or improve patient care by accepting a basic and common sense approach.
After reading, underlying, highlighting and rereading, many takeaways came up from Gawande’s book. A checklist is basically a tool that benefits memory recall rather than a to-do or how to guide list. It just require a minimum number of steps to complete a task, which, in turn, releases extra bandwidth for whatever you are working on. Just think about it when you consider how checklist helps or benefits your own job responsibilities: Johns Hopkins hospital implemented a simple checklist which saved the hospital $2 million from 11 percent to zero by drop in central line infections. This checklist includes the “wear a mask” and “wash hands” — even the most experiences surgeons frequently skipped the crucial steps.
Often our judgment and memory are unreliable, and a ridiculously simple way to make up for that is checklist. The fund managers fail to properly examine investment opportunities, doctors forget to wash hands, and the crisis faced by the pilot in the air forget protocol that can effect on lives. The pilot needs to follow the six key steps to restart the engine when the Cessna airplane’s engine loses the power in flight. The first and the most fascinating step is fly the airplane. Because of the overload of thinking through an emergency, pilot forgets to follow even a primary task so if you forget the first step, nothing else follow.
A checklist fosters communication and teamwork. Gawande writes that people don’t work together if they don’t know the names of each other. The ability of problem solving as a team increases when surgical staff introduce themselves to one another before approaching to a 10- blade. So in future profession, by communicate with my patients first and ask about the history and know patient’s name, this will not only help me to inspect the disease but also provide me teamwork ability by communicating with my staffs about the problems.
